JORDAN RUDESS On MIKE PORTNOY’s Return To DREAM THEATER: ‘There Was Definitely A Renewed Energy’

In a new interview with Ibagenscast, DREAM THEATER keyboardist Jordan Rudess spoke about the band’s reunion with drummer Mike Portnoy after a 13-year absence. Asked how Mike’s return to DREAM THEATER came about, Jordan said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, it had been many, many years since he was in the band; I think it was 13 years since he left. And it’s impossible to say that it wasn’t part of our thinking that maybe one day he would come back, maybe some of us more than other people.”Mike Portnoy started this band,” Jordan continued. “He was also probably one of the main reasons that I’m even in it. So I think you let the clouds move and the weather changes and the things happen and it’s finally, like, ‘Okay, well, this is a great time for him to return to the band.’ And it just made sense for everybody, the timing of that, and something that we all wanted to see happen. So it just took some a lot of changes in different relationships and situations to kind of allow it to happen. And so finally it did.”Regarding the impact that Portnoy’s return to DREAM THEATER had on the songwriting process for the band’s latest album, “Parasomnia”, which came out last month, Rudess said: “Well, it’s interesting ’cause when Mike came into the studio to work with DREAM THEATER again, it was kind of like we didn’t even miss a beat. I kept having to say to myself, ‘God, it’s been a long time since he was here.’ But the reality was it didn’t really feel like that. It felt like it was just the other day, ’cause the chemistry between us is so powerful and so right. We got right back to work — the same kind of like dynamic, the same kind of working relationship. And it was very productive and it felt great. We jumped right back in.”When the interviewer noted that certain parts of “Parasomnia” sound like Rudess and the rest of DREAM THEATER were “just having fun” in the studio, the keyboardist said: “Oh, I think there was definitely a renewed kind of energy. In the course of a band like DREAM THEATER that’s been around for so many years, things happen, people have come and gone — not too many, luckily. But for this particular situation, Mike coming back, we were all so energized and all just really happy to have kind of like this core group back together again. So from that perspective, with that additional kind of burst of energy, it was a lot of fun. So we were enjoying kind of like revisiting the way that we work together.”DREAM THEATER kicked off the North American leg of its 40th-anniversary tour on February 7 at The Met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The trek is “An Evening With Dream Theater” and is the first tour of North America since Portnoy’s return to the lineup, joining singer James LaBrie, bassist John Myung, guitarist John Petrucci and Rudess. The tour will conclude on March 22 in New York City.DREAM THEATER’s sixteenth studio album, “Parasomnia”, came out on February 7, 2025 via InsideOut Music. The LP marks DREAM THEATER’s first release with Portnoy since 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”.”Parasomnia” was produced by Petrucci, engineered by James “Jimmy T” Meslin, and mixed by Andy Sneap. Hugh Syme returns once again to lend his creative vision to the cover art.Portnoy co-founded DREAM THEATER in 1985 with Petrucci and Myung. Mike played on 10 DREAM THEATER albums over a 20-year period, from 1989’s “When Dream And Day Unite” through 2009’s “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”, before exiting the group in 2010.Mike Mangini joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of Portnoy. Mangini beat out six other of the world’s top drummers — Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer and Derek Roddy — for the gig, a three-day process that was filmed for a documentary-style reality show called “The Spirit Carries On”.[embedded content]